Posts Tagged ‘fuel cells’

photo: FuelCell Energy

I wrote this story for Grist, where it first appeared.

It’s been a crappy week — and I mean that in a good way.

On Wednesday, I wrote about the California egg farm that bought a 1.4-megawatt fuel cell powered by biogas produced from chicken poo. (Forget free-range eggs; carbon-free could become all the rage with fashion-forward foodies.)

Now the company that makes the fuel generator, FuelCell Energy, said it has signed a deal to provide two 300-kilowatt fuel cells to a Southern California water district that will install the devices in wastewater treatment plants. These fuel cells will also be powered by biogas derived from wastewater — i.e. what swirls down your toilet.

You get the picture.

An anaerobic digester at the Perris Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility in Riverside County will remove methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the, er, “biosolids,” which will provide the fuel for the fuel cells.

Heat produced by the fuel cells will be used to help power the digester, creating what engineers call a closed-loop system. That will take pressure off the power grid and help California utilities meet a mandate to obtain a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

“We installed our first fuel cell power plant about two years ago and have been very pleased with the reliability of the system,” Ron Sullivan, president of the board of the Eastern Municipal Water District, said in a statement. “We operate around the clock and value the energy security that an on-site fuel cell provides, which is about 40 percent of our total electrical demand at that plant.”

Gordie Hanrahan, a spokesperson for FuelCell Energy, said he could not comment on the costs of the Riverside County fuel cells. But he noted that a 600-kilowatt system installed for a farm customer in California last year cost $9.5 million and had a projected annual energy savings of $700,000. When various incentives and other savings are taken into account, the payback time is estimated to be six years.

A big benefit of fuel cells in smoggy Southern California is that besides emitting virtually no carbon dioxide they also produce nearly zero nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter — all of which are strictly regulated by the state and pose a health hazard.

“The ultra-clean power generation by the fuel cell power plant was an important aspect of our purchasing decision,” noted Sullivan.

Priming the pump was a $2.7 million grant that the state of California awarded to the water district for the purchase of the fuel cells.

When Bloom Energy unveiled its long-awaited fuel cell earlier this year to much media attention and announced it had installed the 100-kilowatt devices at Google, eBay, and other Fortune 500 companies, there was sniping in some quarters about greenwashing as the Bloom Energy Servers ran on natural gas.

But generators can also use biogas and on Tuesday a Bloom competitor, FuelCell Energy, announced the sale of a 1.4-megawatt chicken poo-powered fuel cell to an egg farm in California’s Central Valley.

Olivera Egg Ranch will install an anaerobic digester that will strip methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from untold pounds of poultry poo that usually are stored in a waste lagoon. Instead of escaping into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming, the methane will power the fuel cell, which will generate enough electricity to supply the ranch’s entire operations.

In a double play for the environment and the ranch owner’s pocketbook, the heat that is a byproduct of the fuel cell’s operation will be used by the anaerobic digester, forgoing the need for a combustion-based boiler. In other words, Olivera’s eggs — it packs 14 million cartoons annually — will be produced with virtually greenhouse-gas free electricity.

Most California farming operations that have recently deployed anaerobic digesters — usually to process cow manure — connect them to pipes that ship the methane gas to a distant utility power plant where it is used as fuel.

Fuel cells take distributed energy to the countryside, generating electricity onsite and thus avoiding the need for transmission infrastructure as well as the greenhouse gas emissions of a central natural gas-fired power plant.

“My waste disposal costs will decrease as will my power bill as the poultry operation will continually generate the fuel needed to create electricity, reducing the amount of electricity needed from the electrical grid,” ranch owner Ed Olivera, said in a statement.

photo: Todd Woody

In The New York Times on Wednesday, I write about California regulators’ preliminary decision to reject requests by two big utilities to install grid-connected fuel cells:

While Google, Wal-Mart and other corporations have embraced fuel cells, California regulators have turned down requests from the state’s two biggest utilities to install the technology.

In a preliminary decision, an administrative law judge with the California Public Utilities Commission found unwarranted an application from Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California to spend more than $43 million to install fuel cells that would generate six megawatts of electricity.

The technology transforms hydrogen, natural gas or other fuels into electricity through an electrochemical process, emitting fewer or no pollutants, depending on the type of fuel used.

“It is unreasonable to spend three times the price paid to renewable generation for the proposed Fuel Cell Projects, which are nonrenewable and fueled by natural gas,” wrote the administrative law judge, Dorothy J. Duda, in a proposed ruling issued last week. “In addition, the applications do not satisfactorily address how full ratepayer funding of utility-owned fuel cell generation would enhance private market investment and market transformation of the fuel cell industry.”

photo: Todd Woody

In my latest Green State column in Grist, I take a look at why, despite the hype, Bloom Energy’s fuel cell breakthrough could change the energy game:

Green tech had its Google moment this week in Silicon Valley when one of the most secretive and well-funded startups around, Bloom Energy, literally lifted the curtain on what it claims is a breakthrough in fuel cell technology: affordable electricity! Fewer greenhouse gas emissions! And that’s all before they throw in the bamboo steamer.

After eight years in stealth mode—until this week, Bloom’s website featured the company’s name and little else—the startup pulled out the stops in a carefully stage-managed media blitz that recalled the high-flying dot-com days of a decade ago. First came a report on “60 Minutes” that got the blogs abuzz along with stories in Fortune and The New York Times.

It all culminated in a star-studded press conference at eBay’s headquarters in San Jose on Wednesday, where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, K.R. Sridhar, and gave him a bear hug before several hundred suits, environmental movement honchos and a bank of television cameras.

Before Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and a Bloom board member, delivered the benediction, testimonials were offered by Google co-founder Larry Page and top executives from Wal-Mart, eBay, Federal Express, Coca-Cola, and other Fortune 500 companies that had quietly purchased 100-kilowatt Bloom Energy Servers over the past year.

“This technology is going to fundamentally change the world,” the California Democrat declared.

But is it?

That’s the $400 million question (what some of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capitalists have poured into Bloom so far).

With the hype—the apparently brilliant but unassuming Sridhar was compared to Steve Jobs at one point Wednesday—comes the backlash. Almost immediately analysts and competitors began asking hard questions about Bloom’s claims.

And there are some big unknowns. Will the fuel cell stacks last as long as the company anticipates or will frequent replacement undermine the economics of going off the grid, for both Bloom and their customers?

What’s the total cost of ownership for customers? Bloom says the energy servers have a lifespan of 10 years and a payback period of three to five years. That’s based on the current price of natural gas—which is one fuel used by the devices—and state and federal subsidies that halve the cost of the machines that sell for between $700,000 and $800,000. Will Bloom be able to scale up manufacturing and continue to innovate to bring the price of the energy server down? Can they be competitive without subsidies?

All legitimate questions. But it’s important not to lose sight of what looks to be some fundamental breakthroughs, not only in energy technology but in the way some major corporate players are embracing distributed generation-placing electricity production where it is consumed.

photo: Todd Woody

In Wednesday’s New York Times, I have a story on Bloom Energy, which has revealed its fuel cell technology with much fanfare after remaining in stealth mode for eight years:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — A Silicon Valley company is claiming a breakthrough in a decades-old quest to develop fuel cells that can supply affordable and relatively clean electricity. Google, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and other large corporations have been testing the devices, which will be formally introduced on Wednesday.

The start-up, Bloom Energy, has raised about $400 million from investors and spent nearly a decade developing a new variety of solid oxide fuel cell, considered the most efficient but most technologically challenging fuel-cell technology.

K. R. Sridhar, Bloom’s co-founder and chief executive, said devices made by his company were generating electricity at a cost of 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour, using natural gas. That is lower than commercial electricity prices in some parts of the country.

“We got into this business to make affordable electricity, not fuel cells,” Mr. Sridhar said Tuesday as workers assembled stacks of fuel cells in tall, round cylinders and installed them in silver metal cubes at Bloom’s headquarters in a Silicon Valley office park.

The company has been working on the technology for eight years while saying little. The secrecy, and the prominence of the venture capitalists backing Bloom, have fueled both hype and skepticism about its efforts. Bloom is scheduled to unveil the technology Wednesday at a news conference attended by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and a member of Bloom’s board.

I followed up the piece with an online story in The Times offering a more detailed look at Bloom:

In The New York Times on Wednesday, I wrote about Bloom Energy, the once-secretive Silicon Valley start-up that has apparently made a big breakthrough in developing a fuel cell that can generate electricity at competitive prices while minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.

The company is officially unveiling its Bloom Energy Server at a news conference on Wednesday morning featuring Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California; Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state and a Bloom board member; and John Doerr, Silicon Valley’s leading green-tech investor. But on Monday and Tuesday, I had the opportunity to spend some time at the start-up’s headquarters in Sunnyvale and to see the Bloom box up close.

In contrast to the usual Silicon Valley practice of announcing a coming product, Bloom spent nearly a decade developing its fuel-cell technology while saying nary a word. Over the past year and a half, it has quietly sold and installed 100-kilowatt Bloom boxes at Google, Bank of America, Wal-Mart and other big companies. The boxes cost $700,000 to $800,000 apiece.

“Silicon Valley is learning some hard and important skills, mainly making stuff again,” said Mr. Doerr, a partner at the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a Bloom Energy board member.

Making stuff, particularly solid-oxide fuel cells, is very hard work. Such fuel cells have been something of a holy grail as they can operate at extremely high temperatures to maximize efficiency and can use a variety of fuels, like natural gas and biogas. Since the heat allows the fuel to be directly transformed into electricity through an electrochemical process, the expensive precious metals and rare-earth elements used in other fuel cells to act as catalysts could theoretically be eliminated.

But finding cheap common materials as substitutes and ensuring fuel cells don’t crack and leak under such conditions have stymied scientists for more than 30 years.

Photo: Golub Corporation

In The New York Times on Wednesday, I write about a New York grocery store chain that has installed a low-emission fuel cell to power one of its supermarkets:

A supermarket in Albany is among the first grocery stores in the country to install a fuel cell to supply cleaner, greener electricity along with heat and hot water.

Fuel cells reform natural gas to produce hydrogen that’s combined with oxygen to generate electricity, heat and water. The process produces a fraction of the carbon dioxide and other pollutants emitted by power plants.

The Price Chopper store in Albany, owned by the Golub Corporation, is using a 400-kilowatt PureCell fuel cell made by U.T.C. Power, a division of United Technologies.

The fuel cell provides most of the electricity for the 69,000-square-foot supermarket, and in the event of a blackout it can operate off the grid to keep the lights on.

Benny Smith, vice president of facilities for Golub, said the company began investigating fuel cells in 2007 when electricity prices spiked in the Northeast, where it operates 120 Price Chopper stores.

“You have to plan your own destiny,” said Mr. Smith. “After meeting with the U.T.C. folks, we decided to go with a fuel cell since a combined heat and power system is more efficient and had a positive cash flow.”

A major consideration, according to Mr. Smith, was the availability of financial incentives from the New York State Energy Research Development Authority. He said the agency gave U.T.C. an $800,000 grant, which the company factored into a lease agreement with Golub.

The fuel cell, which feeds electricity into the power grid, began operating last month. During the winter, it supplies about 90 percent of the store’s electricity and heats the facility. “We’re producing at a much more effective cost due to the combined heat and power,” said Mr. Smith.

About Green Wombat

Green Wombat is written by
Todd Woody, a veteran environmental journalist based in California who writes for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Grist and Yale e360. He's one of the few people on the planet who have held a northern hairy-nosed wombat in the wild.

Todd formerly was a senior editor at Fortune magazine, an assistant managing editor at Business 2.0 magazine and the business editor of the San Jose Mercury News.